


I'll Come to Thee by Moonlight

by Saxifactumterritum



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode: s03e03 Brothers in Arms, Making Up, Season/Series 03, Talking, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 18:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17771891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saxifactumterritum/pseuds/Saxifactumterritum
Summary: Aramis seeks out Porthos after Brothers in Arms and they talk. Then there is cuddling.





	I'll Come to Thee by Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from the highwayman a poem by someone, it has nothing to do with anything, I just... like that tiny out of context words

It’s dark, too late for anyone to be up unless they’re on duty. Aramis hadn’t thought about how cold the ground will be without his boots, his feet are freezing as he makes his stealthy way through the garrison corridors. He went by rote to the rooms that used to be Porthos’s, thankfully remembering before he broke in that Porthos has different rooms now. The moon comes in through an open doorway and Aramis stops, in nothing but his underthings and a billowing shirt, hoping it’s not someone else wandering around. He hears soft voices outside and recognises the cadets, presumably back from a duty or something. He slips past and carries on his way. 

 

Porthos’s new rooms are tucked away, down a darker passage. Aramis hesitates, but it’s cold and he is at the very least going to borrow a pair of boots. Plus he can hear someone moving around and there’s a sliver of light under the door. He taps softly and listens as Porthos stills the other side of the door, then a chair scrapes quietly, there’s some footsteps, a quiet metallic sound, and then more steps. Aramis moves away from the door, supposing that Porthos has brought weapons. Porthos opens it all the way, though, and stands there, fully-dressed but with his jacket open and his armour off, a candle in one hand. He is holding his pistol but loose, not as if he expects an enemy. Aramis steps into the light of his candle. 

 

“Oh, it’s you,” Porthos says, not as belligerent as he might be but not exactly welcoming. He looks Aramis up and down and frowns. “Are you mad? It’s freezing. Get in here.”

 

He steps out of the way and Aramis ducks inside, the door closing behind him. There’s a small fire lit, a table set up by it covered in papers, a map held-down by a book, a plate with an end of bread on it and an apple core. This is clearly where Porthos has been, he heads back there while Aramis looks around. There’s no bed in here, Porthos must have another room further in. 

 

“Well?” Porthos asks. 

 

“I thought you… might be awake,” Aramis says. There’s another table, bigger, more chairs, set up under a window. There’s not a curtain, the moon’s coming in. 

 

“What?” Porthos says, then waves it away. “Wasn’t asking an explanation, come over by the fire. It’s cold, Aramis, and you’re half naked.”

 

“Oh,” Aramis says, and goes to stand near the fire. Porthos nudges him over and kneels, adding some wood until it’s blazing. “Thank you. I didn’t need… thanks.”

 

“Did you have a nightmare or something? You only ever used to get this uncertain if you’d been dreaming,” Porthos says, getting his chair and setting it by the fire, putting Aramis into the chair with a hand to his shoulder and waist. “Haven’t got any wine, these days, I’m afraid.”

 

“I didn’t have a nightmare,” Aramis says, looking into the fire. “I just wanted to find you.”

 

“Here I am,” Porthos says, over by the other table getting himself a chair. He brings it to the fire, too, and stretches his legs out with a sigh, kicking off his boots. “I feel old.”

 

Aramis laughs, looking Porthos over. He doesn’t look old, he’s bigger than Aramis remembers, stronger, he wears the years well - he looks beautiful in the firelight, too. Porthos smiles at him, amused. 

 

“You look good,” Aramis says, laughter fading. He finds himself smiling, easily, meeting Porthos’s eyes. 

 

“Didn’t say I  _ look _ old, now, did I?” Porthos returns. “I know how I look.”

 

He stretches out his shoulders and settles himself, chair creaking, showing off. Aramis remembers him like that, proud of his strength, of the way he looks like a man who’s been fighting for years and knows damn well how to do it well. 

 

“What’d you want, Aramis?” Porthos asks. 

 

“Earlier, when we were fighting together, I wanted to know what happened at Alcase,” Aramis says. 

 

“d’Artagnan said he’d given you a run down,” Porthos says, shrugging. “Wasn’t anything much, the captain just wanted me to know he’d do anything. He came to get me without a thought to anything, turned up covered in blood.”

 

“The captain, Athos?” Aramis checks, and Porthos sends him another quick smile. “No, I don’t want to hear the story, I didn’t come for that. I don’t need to know.”

 

“Alright,” Porthos says. “I’m not following you. I’ve got work to finish, you’re welcome to the bed if you like, just through-”

 

“Don’t,” Aramis says, looking at his hands. “I don’t know how to say this, give me your time, please. I promise not to take too much of it.”

 

“You can have as much as you like of that,” Porthos says. 

 

Aramis glances at him but finds that he’s only being genuine. He looks over to the window, out into the night, and then into the fire, and then down at his feet. His stockings are dirty. He feels a frisson of anxiety that he’s not finding the words, and when Porthos gets up to his feet Aramis’s breath catches. 

 

“Hey,” Porthos says, calm and warm. “I’m just getting my pistols. If you’re taking your time I’m going to clean them, I haven’t done it in a while and I need something to do with my hands or I’m gonna send you mad with my fidgeting.”

 

Aramis nods and Porthos gives him a carefully reassuring smile before heading across the room. His belt is hung on the back of a chair, and the pistol he greeted Aramis with is there, but the rest of his weapons are laid out on the windowsill. Porthos gathers his musket and a second pistol, and brings all three to the fire. Aramis watches again as he goes for cleaning things, a roll of material on the table. He unrolls it on the floor and Aramis has always loved watching this, Porthos’s fingers quick and skilled pulling a gun apart, so certain. It’s comforting, familiar, and Aramis finds himself relaxing. They sit in silence, Porthos carefully checking his weapons and cleaning everything minutely, raising pieces to his lips to blow away dust, oiling the mechanisms.

 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Aramis says, at last, deciding to start there. 

 

“I know that feeling,” Porthos says. 

 

“Yeah,” Aramis says. “I keep, I  _ kept _ thinking about you. Here, tonight, when I was lying in bed. But before. In the monastery.”

 

“Good,” Porthos says. “Damned right.”

 

It makes Aramis laugh, just a little. 

 

“I missed you,” Aramis says. 

 

“And yet here we are,” Porthos says. 

 

“There’s a lot of darkness in me,” Aramis says. “When I was very small, my mother loved me and did her best but we didn’t have much and sometimes what we did have… I’m not ashamed of the work she did. But it was dangerous, and sometimes we weren’t safe.”

 

“You’ve told me a little bit,” Porthos says, snapping the pistol back together and reaching for the musket. 

 

“When I lived with my father I would get scared and I wouldn’t be able to breathe, and it was like falling into darkness. And then, after Savoy, they came back. Those panics,” Aramis says. 

 

“I remember,” Porthos says, not as if he’s chastising Aramis for repetition, or as if he’s reminding Aramis he was there, just a reassurance. As if to say, yes, that is what happened, I saw it too. I noticed. Aramis nods. 

 

“But it was more than panic,” he says. “It was always more than panic, and it was more than things that happened to me. I was reckless.”

 

Porthos interrupts to chuckle at him and quibble over the past tense, and Aramis lets him, enjoying the teasing. 

 

“I can’t think things through like you do, and I am reckless,” Aramis says. “But it is more than that. Sometimes I just find myself… doing things. I haven’t always been able to make choices about things, and sometimes the choices I have made have been destructive. Not consciously, perhaps, but not accidentally either.”

 

“Ok,” Porthos says. “I can see that.”

 

“You’ve saved my life more times than I care to count,” Aramis says, looking into the fire again. “After that last mad rush against Rochefort, I was worried about the queen and my son, I won’t lie. That motivated me to think about things I usually didn’t consider.”

 

Porthos is finished with the musket. He starts to reassemble it, moving slowly, checking things as he goes. He doesn’t look up when Aramis glances his way, just nods encouragingly. He hasn’t wanted to hear this, to listen, but now he’s quiet and calm and not interrupting. 

 

“I didn’t want you die for my sake,” Aramis says. “But I wasn’t being heroic, or self-sacrificing. I didn’t know how to fix it. I couldn’t shake the darkness, it was clawing at me like it wanted to drag me to hell. I wanted to die.”

 

Porthos stills, then consciously continues his work, swallowing. Swallowing back words and assurances, Aramis knows. And he knows, without a doubt, that he’s not the first person to tell Porthos this. Any shock or fear is repressed, Porthos doesn’t reach out or question it or push, he just sits and waits for more. 

 

“I would have died, many times, if you weren’t there,” Aramis says. “Not just when you saved my life from a ball or a blade, you were there, at my back. You’d come and sit and eat and talk and drag me into trouble, and you’re right of course. I do enjoy the fight, I told d’Artagnan once I was born for it and I don’t know, maybe that’s right. I love it. But I couldn’t.”

 

“I don’t want to argue it,” Porthos says. 

 

“I don’t want to argue with you, either. I don’t want to fight  _ you _ ,” Aramis says. Porthos grins fiercely as he finishes putting the musket back together. “I’m not talking about sparring.”

 

“I’m still beating you every time,” Porthos says. 

 

“Shut up and clean your other pistol,” Aramis says, which just makes Porthos laugh. He bends and gets a small pistol out of his boot, tossing it to Aramis. “What, you want to have a shooting competition? I’ll still beat you there.”

 

“Nah, giving you something to do,” Porthos says. He throws a cloth and some oil over too. Aramis starts taking the gun apart. “Good. Carry on, then, you were saying about dying in a monastery.”

 

“Has someone shot you for being annoying, yet?” Aramis asks. Porthos laughs again, softly this time as if fond. “Alright. It doesn’t matter, you’re right. I wanted to say thank you, anyway, not tell you this story again in a new way.”

 

“Thank me?” 

 

“Yes. I’m alive,” Aramis says. “I never thought I would be alive, I thought I’d die years ago. I’m sorry that I didn’t ride to war with you. I know I promised, and I know you asked me. I’m sorry, I’m more sorry than I can say that… but you could have asked more of me. I made more promises than the ones you reminded me of that night, or have since. I know you don’t like it, I know you’re angry, but Porthos, you let me go.”

 

“Never,” Porthos mutters, hands suddenly moving faster over the pistol, flicking it back together so quickly. 

 

“Say what you like, I was always so relieved that you left me to it and didn’t push any harder. It wouldn’t have been difficult for you three to have persuaded me to go with you, admit it,” Aramis says. “I’m easy to talk into a fight.”

 

“There was something in your eyes,” Porthos says, interrupting him. “Okay? I’ve seen that before, and I’ve seen you like that before. I know that look.”

 

“Yes,” Aramis says. “So thank you, I am glad that I am alive. Four years is a long time, and whatever you say I do know what war is like. I know you.”

 

“Ha,” Porthos says, not a trace of laughter in it. 

 

“I know that when I walked away, I broke something,” Aramis says. 

 

There’s silence, just the crack of a log in the fire as it gets too hot and splits, the gentle sounds of burning wood, a cat outside in the city somewhere, faint strains from a nearby tavern. Porthos’s hands have gone still on his pistol, now. Aramis puts the smaller one back together and sits still, too, letting things settle around them. Around that acknowledgment. Aramis waits until the guilt and fear and anger in him die down again before he starts speaking. 

 

“If I could, I would go back. Far back, before the queen, before any of that, and I would take notice earlier and I would fix myself,” Aramis says. “I would make myself better sooner. I would do better. I would give anything to be able to have done better by you.”

 

“You did ok,” Porthos says. “Wasn’t perfect meself.”

 

“Hardly that,” Aramis agrees, getting a soft laugh out of Porthos for it. “I want you to feel safe. Remember the first time you were injured, properly injured, when we were friends? I took care of you.”

 

“Always did that, is this a specific time?” Porthos says, and oh he really is as frustratingly belligerent as ever, just with a new edge of sarcasm that sounds like it’s caught from Athos. 

 

“Yes,” Aramis says. “It doesn’t matter. You were hurt, and more than that you were fevered, and you couldn’t rest and I didn’t know for a long time what to do about it. But even then I knew you well enough to pick up on things, and make a connection, and I swore to myself then that I would do everything in my power to make you feel safe. It took a while, I don’t know if you realise how long you instinctually distrusted me and kept on guard and on watch and barely slept in my presence.”

 

“That’s not true,” Porthos says. “Trusted you fine. The other things weren’t you.”

 

“Ok, maybe trust isn’t the right word, whatever it was there did come a point where you were safe with me. You’d sleep, knowing I had your back, knowing you weren’t alone,” Aramis says. “You told me that you never worried what was behind you because you knew I had your back. That goes both ways. The fight feels alive because you kept me that way, this feels safe because you’re here, I could stay at that monastery because you were out there keeping the world at bay. After Savoy you held me together, bolstered me, made the world beautiful again. God in heaven, Porthos, you’re everything to me.”

 

“Are you done with that pistol?”

 

Aramis hands it over and Porthos stashes it back in his boot, gets up to go put the others back on the windowsill. 

 

“I’m going to do it,” Aramis says. “Make it safe again.”

 

“Doing okay at it so far,” Porthos says, standing over by the window. “Is this why you came here tonight? To tell me all of this?”

 

“No,” Aramis says, and then, because he can’t quite help himself, “I came to clean your boot pistol.”

 

“Oi,” Porthos growls, then laughs, coming back to sit. He looks tired. 

 

“I came because I couldn’t sleep, and because I’m afraid,” Aramis says. “Because I missed you, because my dreams were dark, because I was cold. Because the world is too close, because I almost lost you today, because who knows when we might die? I was born to fight, you’ll never give up soldiering, we’ll be lucky if we make it to old age. Athos says ‘Aramis, give him time’, and I will. All the time you want. I’ll build it from the ground up. But, please, just…”

 

“Hm,” Porthos says, contemplating the fire. “You know, I was tied up a long time today and Christoph and his men weren’t exactly gentle. You used to have a salve.”

 

“It was the same thing Athos or d’Artagnan or whoever will have already found for you,” Aramis says, waving it away. “It wasn’t anything spec- oh.”

 

“Bloody idiot,” Porthos says, warm and fond. “Come here.”

 

Aramis goes, kneeling by his chair, and Porthos holds out his hands. Aramis takes his wrists one by one and, with permission, carefully checks over any damage, checks that Porthos has taken care. Then he presses kisses over the raw skin and looks up into Porthos’s face.

 

“May I?” Aramis asks, holding the edge of Porthos’s jacket. 

 

Porthos nods and sits forwards, letting Aramis take his jacket and untuck his shirt, pulling it up to examine Porthos’s torso for bruises, his back and shoulders. Lets Aramis run his hands over his muscles and looks for tension and stiffness.

 

“I do feel safe with you,” Porthos says. “Not saying I’m not angry, that there’s not things to rebuild. Can’t help that you make me feel safe, though.”

 

“Good,” Aramis says. “That’s good to hear.”

 

“I’m okay,” Porthos says. 

 

“I know that,” Aramis says. “You’re always ok. I want to see where you’re hurt, though. Is there anything else? They usually bruise your legs trying to make you kneel, when they take you.”

 

“Ha,” Porthos says, and this time he does laugh with it, pride and amusement and a sly pleasure at being remembered for that. “Nah. Not this time. Are we done here?”

 

“Yes,” Aramis says, getting to his feet and stretching. “If I could borrow a pair of boots, I’d be grateful.”

 

“What d’you need boots for in bed?” Porthos says, utterly disgusted. “Religion ain’t made you any smarter, has it?”

 

“Where did you put those guns, again?”

 

“Don’t shoot me for being annoying. Help me out of this chair, I’ve become part of it,” Porthos says. 

 

Aramis hauls him up, laughing as he makes a fuss about creaking and stretching himself out. He catches a few genuine winces, especially as Porthos bends and then kneels to tamp the fire. 

 

“I know what you meant when you said you felt old,” Aramis says. “You’ll wear your injuries forever, some of them. Is it getting worse?”

 

“Some of them,” Porthos says, lightly. “It’s not so bad, I’m just fussing.”

 

He gets up from the floor on his own as if to prove it, graceful and easy. Aramis waits. Porthos huffs and comes and wraps an arm around his waist, leading him through a door behind a curtain. It’s a small room but behind the fire and inward to the rest of the garrison and it’s warm. The bed has more blankets and looks softer than in the old days, but there’s a bed roll on the floor spread out as well, Porthos’s cloak thrown over it. Aramis eyes it uncertainly. 

 

“Got used to sleeping on the ground, last four years,” Porthos says, nudging them, thankfully, to the bed. “It’s just there for if I can’t sleep, bit sleepless myself tonight. I mostly sleep here. Especially if I’m napping.”

 

Porthos says that last with such pleasure, so contented that he can nap. Aramis sighs and sits, rolling off his stockings, rubbing some warmth into his arms as Porthos gets out of his trousers and stockings and shirt until he’s in his underthings. He stretches again, wincing and working out kinks, then sits beside Aramis, grinning. 

 

“Well?” Porthos says. 

 

“How did I forget what an arsehole you can be?” Aramis says, acerbic, annoyed that he’s being gently mocked for being uncertain. “Like it’s my fault I’m sitting here like a virgin awaiting an invitation. You haven’t exactly been welcoming recently.”

 

“Welcome, Aramis, to my humble abode,” Porthos says, grandly, then falls back on the bed cackling, muttering something about virginity and rolling about until he’s under the covers. Aramis is about to take off his shirt so he can sleep bare-chested, and join him, when Porthos grabs his hip and yanks.

 

“Oi!” Aramis says, wriggling out of his hold and up again, wrestling free from his shirt as Porthos gets hold again and struggles him under the covers, into Porthos’s arms, laughing against his skin, breath hot. Aramis fights him until they’re comfortable, then relaxes and sighs. Porthos sighs, too, happily. “Thank you.”

 

“Can I tell you something?” 

 

“Mm,” Aramis says. He’s warm, he’s unburdened himself, he has Porthos back. He’s sleepy. 

 

“I’m glad you sought me out, tonight. Appreciate the company,” Porthos says. 

 

“Where’s Athos and d’Artagnan?” Aramis asks, turning into Porthos’s arms to be held. “Hmm. s’nice.”

 

“d’Artagnan, you’ll be shocked to hear, is sleeping with his wife these days,” Porthos says. Aramis is careful to get an elbow in his side for that. “Mph. If I asked he’d stay.”

 

“What about Athos?” Aramis says.

 

“Oh lord, Aramis, I don’t know,” Porthos says, tiring of answering things. “I think he’s writing reports or at the Louvre with Treville. He might stumble here at some point in the night. Go to sleep.”

 

“I am asleep,” Aramis argues, pushing closer into Porthos’s arms. He smiles. “I missed you. I’m glad I’m here.”

 

“Better than any stupid monastery,” Porthos grumbles, wrapping Aramis tight. 

 

“Yes,” Aramis admits. 

 

Porthos makes a pleased sound, settling into the bed, and Aramis settles after him with a sigh, against Porthos’s body, held. He gets his arms around Porthos to hold him in return. It is better than the monastery. Better than cold nights alone, better even than old nights like this. Now he is well in his mind, or more so. More whole. Reckless still, perhaps, but not destructive. This time he’s not going to hurt anyone, least of all Porthos. He’s going to do better, this time, and keep Porthos safe. 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
